


Your Love Could Start a War

by waterfront



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Growing Up, In my head this was a comedy but it got kind of serious, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-27 07:55:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30119583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waterfront/pseuds/waterfront
Summary: In the midst of their secret tryst, an Earth Kingdom Prince attempts to kiss Katara and Zuko nearly starts an international incident.Something a little sweet, a little spicy, and a lot of horny teenage angst. Because letting a bunch of youths run a country, much less save the world, has always been a historically bad idea.
Relationships: Katara & Zuko (Avatar), Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 13
Kudos: 184





	Your Love Could Start a War

_You know I gotta love you_   
_Our name is written in the streets_   
_You are a force of nature_   
_The fire's moving through your feet_

  
_Your love could start a war_   
_Your love_   
_Is what I'm fighting for_   
_I would die for this revelation_

* * *

“It’s dawn.” 

  
He twirls a long strand of her hair around his long fingers, her breath tickling his chest. It’s the moment before the sun rises and the moon slips away — the minutes in time where they both are restful, quiet. Satiated. He thinks he hears birdsong. 

  
“I know.”

  
“Don’t you have meetings at _dawn-o’clock_?” 

  
“Probably.” 

  
The hand resting below the star-shaped scar on his chest picks up and starts to draw lazy circles around the curves of his abdomen, the scratch of her nail nuzzling something awake as it dips dangerously near the lip of his trousers. 

  
“We’re both expected somewhere.” She says, almost like a challenge. 

  
He checks the sleek wooden clock on his desk across the bedroom. He does have a meeting in fifteen minutes, but they’ve beaten that record before . . .

  
And that’s what it had been, in the beginning, record-keeping — how long could they stare, the gaze heated and electric, at each other across the round dais, surrounded by foreign nationals, before someone caught on? Who would break first when their hands brushed up against each other over the exchange of scrolls? How long could they kiss in his political chambers before they were caught? Who remembered the darkest and most hidden places in the palace where they could, with trembling fingers, find and explore the planes and curves of their bodies?

  
Who saw the other naked first?

  
Record-keeping. A budding romance kept in balance by a game, a simple childish tit-for-tat in a winner-take-all, the-house-loses, endless tournament of exchanges in hot skin, rushed lips, and rocky ecstasy. 

  
Because talking about it, saying something, acknowledging this fledgling thing that neither of them had ever felt before — was absolutely out of the question. 

  
_No, she didn’t think Zuko looked good in black silk and scarlet fringes, what are you talking about_? 

  
So, this was how they managed it. Managed a secret relationship where they could be bound to something other than duty. 

  
The secrecy, the lies by omission which — with a cannon aiming at them and they had to be honest — just made it so much hotter. They tried to not let it affect their political negotiations and they never let it affect the outcome of treaties and the reparations management. But if you thought after a particularly nasty disagreement on taxes, Katara never went just a bit too slow, when he _needed_ that friction, then you’ve clearly never been in a secret physical (heavy on the "physical") relationship with the king of a nation under an entirely new regime, who himself is basically nothing but hormones and literal fire cranked to an eleven. 

  
Minister of Agriculture be damned, he turns and takes her neck and jaw in his hand, his thumb gently pressing up under her chin. Her lashes flutter up to his face and he feels something inside of him cave inward. It was always her eyes. Always. Always the thing that brought the heat out of him first. 

  
She sucks in breath as he pulls them together, their lips meeting in a crash, and he slides down, away from the pillows so she hovers over him.

  
She never retied her saree after last night, he realizes dizzily, when they break apart and her chest is entirely exposed. But by the smirk on her face, that was the exact reaction she was hoping he’d have. 

  
His hand skirts up her side, thumb brushing her ribs, heading agonizingly slow towards her —

  
There’s a knock at the door. “Sir, we are to escort you to your first meeting with Minister Yoto.” 

  
She can almost taste the snarl that travels up his throat and into his mouth, her tongue a pleasant visitor. 

  
“Maybe if we’re quiet they’ll go away,” he mutters against her lips. 

  
Something within her, something much stronger and insistent than her rational thinking, desperately wants to agree with him, but she starts to pull away. 

  
“ _No, no, no . . ._ ” he whines a little too loudly. “I can reschedule.” 

  
“Zuko, shhh,” she laughs softly and presses a finger to her lips, eyes on the door. She sits back on her heels in the shadowy corner of his absurdly large mattress and he follows her up, grabbing at her hips. She’s tying her saree back in place and he’s silently begging her to stay — teeth nipping at the curve of her shoulder, kisses in the soft flesh below her ear, hands kneading her elbows —

  
“Sir.” Knock knock. “Are you awake in there? Should we call for someone?”

  
“Leave me alone,” he rasps in her ear, in just the way he knows it makes her thighs tremble. “Leave me alone with my —,”

  
“With your what?” She asks before she can stop herself. 

  
He stills and her heart is suddenly too big for her chest, restricting the airflow into her lungs. She loosens her grip on his pants ( _how did her hands get there?_ ) and unwinds herself from the draw of his chest. She looks up at him and sees only panic. 

  
Panic. 

  
Why does that particular look hurt more than anything that could have crossed his face at that moment? 

  
Her heart shriveling at a frightening rate, as though someone had punctured it, she rolls out of his grasp, off the bed and quickly retightens her sarong. She has jer sarong around her hips, is striding toward the hidden passage between their two rooms without a single look back, and his voice stops her in her tracks.

  
“Katara.” 

  
She wants to turn around and say, _no, I didn’t mean anything by it. I know this is nothing_ , because she’d rather tell a thousand lies than give up this thing they have. She wants to look him in the eye and say it, but a part of her would decay and die if he said the same thing to her. 

  
She doesn’t know what she wants to see or not see on his face so she doesn’t turn around. 

  
“Katara, I —,”

  
Another knock. “Your Lordship, I’m going to get your uncle to see if he can —,”

  
“Leave me alone!” He roars. “Give me five _fucking_ minutes. Wait by the end of the hall.”

  
“Yes, m’lord.” The footsteps recede like the scuttle of rodent claws.

  
Katara feels his hand around her elbow and she wants to pull away but she can’t imagine doing anything more childish. Her pride won’t let her look him in the face. 

  
“We’ve never talked about this before. I—I— I didn’t know you wanted to.”

  
“I don’t.” That lie is particularly acidic in her mouth. 

  
She can sense some sort of speech rising in his chest, so she swallows the bad taste in her mouth and glares at him. Glares like a woman. “I don’t want to talk about it. There’s nothing to talk about. I didn’t mean anything by it. I know this is nothing.”

  
She easily pulls her elbow out of his grasp as though he had gone limp. She snatches up her shoes and gently pulls the sconce to open up the hidden passage between their rooms. 

  
There’s something else he wants to say, but she’s not ready to hear it.

* * *

  
The thing about the Fire nation capital is that it was specifically designed to draw in and hold as much sunlight as possible. Which is fucking swell if you and fire are particularly acquainted, but not so much if you can feel all the moisture being sucked out of you by a superheated vacuum. 

  
Beneath her robes, Katara wipes the sweat from her spine and the blades of her back with a twist of her finger. The wind huffs, annoyed, across the white promenade where she, a handful of royals from across the world, and the rest of the ambassadors sit underneath white cotton umbrellas. The women here not from the Fire nation have brought out their fans and are casually encouraging airflow across their painted cheeks. Katara is sure her silver makeup is rolling off her skin in great grey gobs, onto her beautiful blue robes in the style of a Fire nation noble. 

  
They are waiting to greet an envoy from the Earth Kingdom. King Bumi, as he aged in years, was beginning to look for a suitable heir, not by blood but by choice. His choice. While this caused nearly as much chaos as the actual one hundred year war amongst the royal family, Katara knew Bumi was laughing himself silly over the ridiculousness of it all. 

  
While many other royal family members did endless amounts of favors and tricks, like trained circus animals, in order to win Bumi’s favor, the Qiangs were proving to be one of the more formidable opportunists. They had set sail a month prior, traveling around the world to first earn the approval and love of the leaders from the other three nations, starting with the Fire nation, presumably because that was their biggest challenge. While the Fire nation had worked industriously to earn the trust of the other nations in the years following the end of the war, Firelord Zuko’s stubbornness was unmatched in any political arena. 

  
As though being judged for her aloofness, Katara rolls her eyes gently, this way and that, until they find the elaborate stage they had placed his palanquin on. Half in shadow and still as a corpse, he looks nothing like the wildly fervent boy who earlier that morning had done everything conceivable to let him kiss her a little longer. 

  
Underneath the beating sun, she swallows and tears her gaze to her fingers, clasped tightly in her lap. This is when it hurt the most, the secrecy. This is when the game wasn’t fun anymore. 

  
The brash clap of trumpets signals the arrival of the Earth Kingdom train. Dressed in dark forest greens and solid cotton, Katara almost feels sorry for soldiers on their ostrich horses, the sun unyielding and unforgiving. Behind them, royal Earth benders folds the road back and away, carrying an enormous emerald-colored box, lined with gold and the royal crest imprinted on its front. Behind them walks more soldiers, ladies-in-waiting, and servants carrying what was most likely an offering from the Qiangs — a small fortune by the weight and size of the packs strapped the backs of the servants. 

  
A slim figure, dressed in scarlet, leaves the side of the Firelords’s palanquin and, with all the appropriate confidence and assuredness, marches towards the front most soldier who climbs down from his ostrich horse. After an exchange of bows, the Fire nation’s cryer turns back to the small gathering beneath the umbrellas. 

  
“Firelord Zuko,” he bows deeply in Zuko’s direction. “My lords, ladies, and welcomed political allies, may I present to you, the Qiang family, of royal and noble birth, in direct lineage to the Great and Powerful, King Bumi.” 

  
The side of the box shimmers and outsteps a sturdy man with a thick neck and equally thick eyebrows. He surveys the area as if planning to build a summer palace in this very spot.

  
Katara’s mind flutters back to the extensive briefing all political advisors as well as visiting ambassadors received a few weeks ago on the Qiang family — everything from their placement in the royal family, their interests in the Fire nation, and their favorite foods. The last bit is a little fuzzy because that was the day she and Zuko pleasantly discovered the throne could in fact fit two people —

  
“To your Lordship and the most honorable court, I offer General Ling Qiang, third of his name, and protectorate of Makapu providence.” 

  
Right, right, she totally remembers that. 

  
“To your Lordship and the most honorable court, I offer Madame Hai Qiang, wife and mother to all within the Makapu providence.” 

  
Hai is a rail-thin woman with a sloping nose and blank eyes. She bows gently before standing next to her husband. 

  
“To your Lordship and the most honorable court, I offer Prince Taio, successor-in-waiting.”

  
The curtain moves away again and a young man, that can only be described as strapping, walks out into the light. His hair is cut razor short, just like his father’s and the entire Earth Kingdom military. Earth bender or not, Katara is entirely sure he could simply dig his massive fists into the ground and rip out two boulders with his bare hands. There is something unsettling by the way he walks — muscles constantly shifting beneath the sleeveless vest of green and gold — as though he were made of stone and brought to animation, in a weak imitation of life. 

  
And by Taio’s greasy grin, Katara knew only danger lay ahead. 

* * *

  
If given the choice between a hundred political arrangements, dissecting the cost and labor of rice paddies in a stuffy, dry room, over having to attend another royal feast, she would have signed over her soul to a life of bureaucracy in an instant. 

  
Katara shifts uncomfortably in her padded chair and tries to breathe through her tightly wound obi. 

  
Dinner had passed much in the same way most other formal feasts had — what was the latest gossip among the royal courts, who was marrying who, and who had fallen into disrepute because of “unmarried affairs.”

  
“Well, I’ve heard from those who know,” begins a dour-looking noble to Katara’s right, “that the youngest of the Chens has run off with a Water tribe girl! Imagine that, a noble marrying a commoner!”

  
Katara’s hand tightens around her goblet. _Yeah, imagine that . . ._

  
“What do I have to do to get that terribly sad look off such a pretty face?”

  
Prince Taio, who had all night been engaged with surrounding conversation, smiles at her with nearly blindingly white teeth. Instantly, she knows he was that kind of boy who with just a single look, the world was sucked through a pin-hole and for a few amazing seconds, you two were the only two people who had ever existed – whoever would exist. 

  
Jet had been like that. 

  
Katara counters, edging her jaw upwards, to throw him off. She isn’t about to be cowed with a perfect smile and a perfectly arched eyebrow. Sometimes fighting without bending was the worst kind of fighting because it leaves her feeling dirty, like she cheated somehow. 

  
She stares at him head on with a toss of her hair. “This look? Oh, this is just because the wine is particularly bitter tonight.”

  
“The wine is bitter or the duchess?” He murmurs and indicates the dour woman with a tilt of his head. 

  
At that she can’t help but grin. He knows he’s won some ground so he turns in his chair, his wide chest blocking out the line of nobles behind him from her vision. 

  
“As Ambassador from the Water Tribe, I’m sure all of this,” Taio gestures airly around him, “must seem entirely superfluous to you.” He had done his homework.

  
Alright, two can play. Katara straightens, still not facing him entirely, and sets her glass primly on the table, wiping her mouth with her thumb. “And as potential heir to the Earth Kingdom throne, these must be an excellent networking opportunity for you.”

  
Those brilliant teeth flash again. “Networking. Socializing. Call it what you want. I prefer to think of it as gaining allies.”

  
“Certainly not conquests, right?” She takes another sip, reveling in the stunned silence.

  
“Ambassador Katara, you wound me.” 

  
“Well, when you speak with double meaning, I’m sure there is a lot lost in translation.”

  
The prince actually laughs. 

  
She was always good at the hidden meanings. The double _entendres_ — that’s how it started — their secret language — that’s how it began with —

  
Katara’s mouth suddenly goes dry as she slowly turns her head away from the prince, up the long feast table, to him. 

  
It was the gnat buzzing in her ear. It was the shadow at the corner of her vision. 

  
She could almost hear him, begging in her ear. _What are you doing, Katara?_

  
Zuko’s gaze has a weight to it that is all at once heart-stopping and bone-chilling. He sits completely still in a sea of movement, of glasses clinking, baubles on wrists sliding and shuffling, women laughing and men yelling. He sits still and watches her, knuckles white around the arms of his throne. 

  
_Why are you doing this?_

  
Somewhere, somehow, the game changed. Forever. 

  
The water in the decanter closest to her fist trembles.

  
_I am not yours. You never —_

  
“I said, do you dance?” 

  
Taio holds a hand out to her, bright eyes blazing in the reflection of the lanterns, making the warmth in them feel entirely artificial. 

  
The music and the conversation had changed pace, the gentle music taking on something more with a tapping beat. She feels as though she was hearing it all through a tin can. 

  
He couldn’t possibly be angry with her. Couldn’t possibly be feeling _possessive_. If he couldn’t have given her a straight answer this morning, then it was obvious how he felt about their whole arrangement. 

  
Katara turns, her own smile cranked up brighter than the moon, and she takes Taio’s hand. 

  
“Lead the way.”

  
Taio, unsurprisingly, is a fantastic dancer. He has the natural grace and rhythm as any member of the Fire nation. His hand holds her own aloft, the other a respectable distance in the middle of her back, but with every spin, it seems to drop a fraction of an inch when he catches her in his arms. 

  
She stops trying to glimpse over the crowd to the head of the table when Taio makes small talk and asks about her family.

  
Zuko is nowhere in sight. 

  
After a time, Taio guides her outside, away from the crowds, onto the pavilion under a midnight sky of stars, somehow carrying two glasses of rice wine but he seemingly never left her side. 

  
His mouth is as smooth as his feet. 

  
“You are a magnificent dancer.” Taio hands her one of the glasses, their fingers brushing around the stem. “Beautiful, intelligent, artistic — the Avatar must be devastated he let you slip by.”

  
Okay, he had done too much homework.

  
“Ah, always good to see the rumor mill is alive and well.” He opens his mouth as if to protest, to perhaps apologize but she shakes her head. “That's not an attack. But whatever Aang — the Avatar — and I had, it’s over. We’re better off just friends.”

  
Though he had no right to ask questions of her past, Katara feels this is disclosure enough. And it’s true. She and Aang had separated amicably because without the thread of the world ending, they found there wasn’t much to go on. 

  
Taio nods as if he understands, his eyes distant. 

  
Katara knows it’s no accident he ignored her all dinner, only to become nearly infatuated with her as the shadows grew long and sunlight died. When voices dropped and the music was sweet. What his exact plans are, she can’t exactly say but at least this is a decent distraction. 

  
A welcomed one, in fact. 

  
“All this talk of conquest and allies,” Taio says as he sets one of the glasses down by her on the half wall, “it sounds like we are at war, Ambassador, but I seek peace. Just like you.”

  
Katara takes the glass, sipping. The rush of dancing left her feeling flushed, a dampness forming between her shoulder blades. “And how do you know what I want, Prince Taio?” 

  
“You wouldn’t be a political advisor to the most powerful leader in the world if you didn’t believe in peace.”

  
For an absolute hulk of a man, she supposes there’s something actually turning behind that wide, flat forehead besides seduction techniques and gym routines. But something about his flowery language grates on her, like a boy shaped like that shouldn’t be capable of nearly poetic waxings. It feels . . . _put on_ , like a light filter silhouetting a single player upon a darkened stage. 

  
Taio leans back against the half wall, not quite looking at her, but a bit behind her. There’s a softness to his eyes that wasn’t there before. Manipulation, she supposes, doesn’t feel like manipulation when it’s done right.

  
“Forgive my intrusion, but I feel as though you haven’t been present all night. 

  
Ulterior motives _and_ perceptive.

  
You come here without an escort, so I can only assume you are not spoken for. Which, as I said before, seems justifiably insane.”

  
“Because of my beauty, intelligence, and artistry?” She says in a smirk. 

  
His eyes glow like the coals of an industrial fire. “Of course.”

  
Something about him falters from the smooth machismo and he picks at something on his finger with his nail. “So you really don’t have any boyfriends I should worry about?”

  
 _Boyfriend, what a stupid word_ , she thinks immediately. _Boyfriend, it’s just so —_  
  
It was like asking to name the sensation of flying. To name the moment you know someone with intention is staring at you, begging you to look. To somehow slow down the world and your heart when he takes you in his arms — to have some sort of bearing when his lips send you, displant you from your body and identify the unnamable. 

  
Katara's nails catch on the concrete as she pulls them into a fist. “No, I don’t have a boyfriend.” 

  
Somewhere beyond the pavillon, there’s a clatter. No doubt party-goers are having too much of a good time. 

  
“But you’re right, Prince Taio.” She breathes out heavily, the noise forgotten, and takes a sip from her glass. “I have a lot on my mind right now, but you have been nothing but the perfect gentleman all night and you don’t deserve my silence.” 

  
She can almost hear the crack and snap of his boulder-like frame as he edges closer to her. “I don’t deserve anything from you. But I’d like the privilege of calling you Katara.”

  
The way he says her name — it’s different. It almost seems stuck between his teeth, trapped between his incisors and licked at will. 

  
It’s different, but does she hate it? 

  
She doesn’t owe Zuko anything either. But she recognizes the building electricity between her and Taio, the expectant crescendo that comes from precious truths revealed and softened whispered voices. He wants to kiss her; that much is obvious. But if she lets him, why does the mere consideration feel like something sinister?

  
They are mere feet away from the party. Hidden mostly in shadow, yes, but if anyone should venture outside, well, they might find it cute, or even progressive, for two young politically powerful players to find romance in one another. Gossip, yes, but hardly a scandal. Hardly sinful. Hardly wrong.

  
Something nasty is building in her gut and she suddenly wants to be alone. She raises her hands to push him away. “Taio —,” 

  
His two massive hands find purchase around her shoulders, pulling her to him like a python tightening its grip around prey. 

  
And then, when he kisses her, she realizes she does in fact hate the way he says her name. She loathes it.

  
Water curling at her hands from the skein beneath her robes, she drains the heat right out of the droplets and sprays it against his hands. Taio yelps, pulls backward and —

  
WHAM

  
As though the night had come alive, a shadow throws itself into Taio's tremendous shoulder and they tumble away. 

  
To her unbelievable surprise, Zuko stumbles into the moonlight, looking like a scarlet tornado. His chest is heaving, and his black hair has fallen free from around the neatly-wound comb. 

  
Taio sways on his knees, his eyes foggy. It was probably the first time in his life he’d ever been hit and it hurt. 

  
“You stay away from her,” Zuko hisses. 

  
His gaze trying to focus, Taio looks up and blinks slowly. “Firelord, is that —?”

  
Without another word, Zuko steps forward and punches the Earth Kingdom prince unconscious. 

  
A silence settles over the courtyard after the body lands with a thud. 

  
She really should have finished the full glass of wine. 

  
“Zuko,” she breathes, her hands rising to her cheeks, her voice high-pitched and as quiet as she could make it, “ _have you completely lost your mind?_ ”

  
The Fire lord straightens, then wobbles. “Possibly.”

  
“Are you _drunk?_ ” 

  
“More than possibly.” Zuko, in his ceremonial robes, suddenly drops to one knee, the world spinning too fast. “Katara, I think I’m also dizzy.”

  
“We have to get him out of here, before anyone sees.” 

  
Katara runs to each flower pot, pulling water from the very roots. Soon she has enough she can bend fluidly and raises the prone form of the prince beneath a layer of ice and a raft of water. 

  
“Him?” Zuko snorts, very un-regally. “We could just push him into the nearest boiling lake.”

  
She bends down and looks at the growing welt on the prince’s face. There’s a chance it could be passed off as a nightly fall after an evening of too much drinking and dancing, but that chance diminishes the longer they’re out here. 

  
“Do you want to start a _second_ hundred-year war?” Katara snaps at Zuko over her shoulder. “Firelords don’t go around punching foreign royals without everyone getting rather upset!” 

  
In the dark, it’s hard to make out his face, but she watches as the flippancy dies, replaced by something darker, fouler. Disgust.

  
“He kissed you.” 

  
She snarls at him: “ _What’s it to you?_ ”

  
Zuko swallows and drops her gaze. He’s stopped wobbling, but the haze in his eyes is still there. 

  
“Can you walk straight?”

  
Mutely, he nods.

  
“Then let’s get the prince here back to his quarters. If anyone asks, the Earth Kingdom prince just went to bed a little early.”

  
The waters ebbing and flowing with the roll of her fingers, Katara slides the prince forward into the shadows of the palace, Zuko following quietly behind. 

* * *

  
By the time they had managed to get Taio into his chambers without being spotted by night servants, Zuko’s quietness that was unique to those inebriated trying desperately to concentrate had rapidly deteriorated into the sober silence of the utterly mortified. 

  
They close the door to the guest chambers and drift into the dark, echoing hallways of the Fire nation’s palace. They pass the turn to the wing where all political ambassadors were housed and Zuko pauses. Katara shakes her head, though in the dark, she imagines he can only see her silver outline.

  
“Your hand,” she says by way of explanation. “You cut it when you . . . hit him.” 

  
“Katara,” the exasperation in his voice overwhelmed by more embarrassment, “you don’t have to take care of everything. I’m fine. It doesn’t even hurt.” 

  
“I’m not doing it for you,” she so readily snaps and immediately regrets. She lowers her voice to reign in her anger and to keep anyone from overhearing. “It will look suspicious if you show up tomorrow with your knuckles busted up and Taio’s face looking like it does. We can only hope he just doesn’t remember.” 

  
When he sighs in anguish, there is a faint spluttering of light, like hot ash caught on the wind. Argument decidedly lost, he turns and walks deeper into the palace, waiting briefly for her to follow.

* * *

  
Despite their seemingly psychotic obsession with sunlight, at night, every room in the Fire nation palace is always comfortably warm. With the scarlet walls, it’s easy to imagine this is what it feels like to rest inside a beating heart. 

  
They sit, in front of the roaring fire in Zuko’s bedchamber, the billowing flames a patient backdrop. She holds his injured hand with its torn knuckles and checks for broken or splintered bones the way she was taught: gentle pressure, compare joints for swelling, discolored skin. Healing, despite her natural indignation to Pakku’s suggestions, had always been something that came naturally to her. Something that centered her. 

  
Bones and joints and meat, how it all fit together, it made her truly impressed with the spirits’ intricacy. Rejoining and remodeling flesh, she could thank the spirits’ for their gifts. And on such a beautifully crafted hand, with his long, flexing fingers, plush palm, this felt like worship.

  
 _He_ felt like worship. 

  
Those golden eyes hadn’t fallen anywhere near her since they sat down.

  
She has nearly a million things to say and nowhere to begin:

  
_I know why you did what you did . . ._

  
_I have no idea why you did what you did . . ._

  
_I have some idea of why you acted like an absolute idiot, but I want to hear you say it . . ._

  
So, she doesn’t. She waves her hands, works her magic, and his skin seals itself. 

  
“All done,” is what she says.

  
“Thanks.” He rises and, without another word, crawls into his bed. “You can go.”

  
“You spoiled little brat!” Katara slams her foot on the ground. “ _Ugh_ — you are acting so childish right now!”

  
“Me?” He whirls around, sending pillows flying. “ _Me?_ I’m the one acting childish? What about you? We have our first fight and you run off into the arms of Stone Soldier Boy!”

  
“I didn’t _run off_ into his arms! We were seated next to each other and he asked me to dance. Like a normal guy would!” 

  
“Oh and I supposed he also asked to kiss you, since you did!”

  
“He kissed me without asking! I didn’t encourage him!” 

  
He’s on his feet, long legs covering the distance to her in a few steps. “Well, I would have asked you to dance if I could!”

  
“If you could?” Katara snaps. “What does that even mean?”

  
The gold in his eyes flashes, a dusty blast reducing them to dirty rust. The fight has suddenly left him. Zuko swallows and drops his gaze. “It means you’re probably better off with guys like him. I . . . I can’t ask you to dance.” 

  
The turn the fight had taken was not one she expected. The same tightness in her throat from this morning expands and she can feel her heart thrashing, panicked, against her ribs. 

  
“Zuko, what are you talking about?” She knows she’s close to tears and there’s nothing she can do about it. “You said we had our first fight. Our first fight of what? What am I to you?”

  
Some part of her, a strong one, led by her heart, wants to hold him. Wants them to move away from this conversation because it sounds horrifically like they’re breaking up. But to break up, you’d first have to . . .

  
“Zuko, please,” she says, her steady breath swallowing the tears in her eyes, “please, if you don’t want me to be around here any more, just say something. If this was all just . . . physical . . . for you, I have the right to know.” 

  
She is breathing, trying to manage the swell of tears, the swell of her chest, from spilling everywhere, when he says it: “I can’t date you, Katara.” 

  
Like a pricked balloon, she falters, the rising in her suddenly quelled. She feels as if she’s been struck over the head. He stands in front of her, hands clenched in fists, unruly black hair dispelled into the dark shadows behind him, where the light of the fire does not reach. 

  
“Why?” is all she can manage. 

  
“Because I’m not normal . . . I am the Firelord.”

  
“What does that have . . .”

  
“The law states if a Firelord remains unmarried until they are twenty-five, the council will pick for them. The guard this morning got me thinking.” He drops his head lower. “I know that’s a few years off, but Katara . . . this hasn’t been nothing and you know it.” 

  
He hesitantly takes the same hand she used to stitch his skin together and holds it between them. 

  
“When I said I can’t date you, I mean, every date would be hounded by officials. Every time we kissed in public, they’d demand to know when the wedding was. Being with me, there’s expectations . . . of courtship . . . of marriage . . . of _babies_ . . .” The scarlet from his robes suddenly flooded his cheeks, but he didn’t let go of their hands. “I can’t ask for you to be okay with that kind of pressure.” 

  
Katara swallows. Marriage. Kids. She absent-mindedly puts a hand on her stomach. Every time they were together, she had been nearly obsessive to take her tea because that was something that flat out terrified her. Sure, one day, but one day had to be far away, right? 

  
“But aren’t you the Firelord? Can’t you just change the law?”

  
He nods, because he’s thought this through. 

  
“Sure, but that won’t change other people’s expectations. And that was kind of the nice thing about whatever we are doing . . .” he scratches at the back of his neck, “we could just be ourselves. I really like getting to know you.” 

  
He’s biting his lip in a way that is very not like a king and Katara realizes he unknowingly could nearly win every argument with that face. 

  
“I really like getting to know you too. Every aspect of you.” She says with a gentle smirk. 

  
She lifts their joined hands to her chest bone. She knows he can feel the thudding of her heart, erratic as it is. 

  
“Katara, when I’m with you, nothing is . . . complicated. I’m really happy. But as Firelord, everyone wants something from me and if they are demanding we get married, before we’ve even really . . . before I’ve ever had the chance to . . . we’ve never even been on a —,”

  
“We’ve never been on a real date.” It seemed absurd to consider, but he was right. Katara’s heart missed a beat, considering what an actual date with Zuko might possibly be like. What it would be like to kiss him in the warmth of the sun, instead of only in the cool moonlight.

  
He cups her neck with his other hand and slowly their eyes meet. “I don’t want to keep hiding in the dark. Every morning I wake up and I want to scream your name from the rooftops.” 

  
Now it’s her turn to blush violently. “Zuko, I—,”

  
"We’ve only ever had a fraction of time.” He swallows and runs his thumb against her cheek. “Everything between us has been in stolen moments and I can’t . . . I can’t ask you to try this because what if . . .”

  
“What if it doesn’t work?” 

  
She knows she should be angry that he could even think of doubting them, but a growing awareness tells her that is how a man handles a relationship. Not a boy, thinking only with his heart. 

  
He’s bowing out to protect her. Publicly dating the Firelord would fundamentally change every aspect of their lives. Anything she would do politically would be viewed under intense scrutiny, the infinitesimal possibility of favoritism dug out from the most innocuous of decisions. Perhaps, it would also be seen as a less direct approach from the Fire nation for world domination. Marry the innocent and naive princess of the Water Tribe and now your kingdom’s territory has doubled. 

  
She bites her bottom lip. “I don’t know.” She hates to see his golden irises flash with such pain, but she carries on. “I don’t know if this will work, but I absolutely believe in us.”

  
The first time in the emerald caves, he didn’t flinch when her hand touched his scar. Years later, he leans into it. The pink flesh is soft beneath her thumb.

  
“Zuko, I’m not going to lie, I am scared. I’m scared of the consequences, but I’m more scared of losing you.” She curls up under him, into his natural body’s warmth, his arms tightening around her back. “We are always asked to make the decision with our heads. What is morally right, and morally wrong. Because of who we are, we constantly have to tell our hearts no. But this . . . this can only be made with our hearts. And my heart says I need you.” 

  
She wants to kiss him so badly it hurts a place under her breastbone, but she needs to say this, needs to have him hear it. Know that she’s in this, _together_ , with him. 

  
She’s betting on them, against everything and everyone else. 

  
And when he falls the few inches into her mouth, she can’t say no.

* * *

  
When Prince Taio, successor-in-waiting, comes barging into an active council meeting the following morning and unabashedly accuses the crowned Firelord of a warrior nation of assault and battery, Zuko merely agrees. 

  
But he assures the prince he had a very good reason for doing so, if it helps.

  
“Well, what is it?” Taio snapped viciously. 

  
“You kissed my girlfriend.”

  
And that’s how the new Firelord and the Ambassador from the Southern Water Tribe nearly avoided an international incident, only to become subjects of the greatest gossip the world had ever known.

**Author's Note:**

> There's that post that goes (roughly) "you can tell ATLA was written by a man because there is no 14 year old girl in the world that would choose a 12 year old over the 16 year old bad boy PRINCE." I had that in the back of my mind while writing this. Because yes, while this is set a few years later, they are still teenagers and everything is very dramatized!
> 
> Another nugget of insight: do you honestly think all that single-minded, hard-wired focus just up and disappeared when Zuko switched sides? Nah, like lighting, it only redirected itself . . .


End file.
